


Five Times

by gisho



Category: Dragaera - Steven Brust
Genre: Ficlet Collection, Gen, Minor Character Death, Political Manuevering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 06:18:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4695326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gisho/pseuds/gisho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Glimpses of Dragaera, in themed sets of five.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Five things Vlad doesn't know he's forgotten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [jmtorres](http://jmtorres.livejournal.com). This set originally posted on LiveJournal.

1\. Dolivar did not live to see the Cycle turn the second time. He died on Kieron's sword, and this much is known to all who still know his name and history. There were no witnesses, and what was known only to the brothers is this: it was at Dolivar's own request. Had chance not interfered, or had Kieron been a Shaman, there would have been one more Great Weapon in the world.

2\. His mother always insisted Vlad call her by her name, rather than "Mother". "It makes me feel so old," she said, and laughed. His father didn't approve of the practice, and besides, Vlad couldn't quite pronounce her name.

3\. There is a certain kind of wine made from blackberries that is only sold in one single tavern in a largely unremarkable town near the border of Fenario. It is called "Water of Oblivion". Vlad learned an old Fenarian ballad about the origins of witchcraft from a fellow traveller, a coachman, that night, but the next morning all he had was a hangover.

4\. Daymar's paranoia about anyone discovering the location of his Really Secret Library would have been legendary, if Daymar allowed anyone to recall that such a room even existed. What made it worse, somehow, was that Vlad had only been looking for the privy.

5\. For a few moments they were perfectly aligned and he remembered every instant of Teldra's life more clearly than he recalled his own. It couldn't last for long and it didn't, but the heady rush of insight remained with him as he returned to the ordinary world where the Jenoine no longer stood a chance against them.

\--


	2. Five people Sethra didn't kill, but Kiera did

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [niquaeli](http://niquaeli.livejournal.com); originally posted on LiveJournal. No canonical basis whatsoever for any of these.

5.

Sethra the Younger really needed to lose that insufferable smirk. Even writing lines hadn't done much to remove it. Sethra Lavode wished for an excuse, but it would hardly be honorable to challenge her to a duel, and worse to fight without such formalities; she had already subjected the woman to such humiliation as should have left her cringing in terror.

So she presented the problem to Kiera, and Kiera pointed out that it wasn't all that terrible to be punished by your old teacher, who was demonstrably better than you at sorcery, in a way that would never become public knowledge; what was needed was for someone Sethra the Younger thought was lower than dirt to get the better of her.

Thankfully such a person was close at hand. She didn't even have to put out a contract.

 

4.

Kiera didn't even carry a weapon, so if she had to kill someone unexpectely, either she had to do it unrevivafiably (and make sure there were no witnesses) or she had to kill them with her bare hands. Oftentimes it was both; there are relatively few ways of killing someone, simply and easily, with bare hands alone, that do not result in damage to the spine or the brain. For the dramatic, there is the ripping out of a whole heart, but this involves breaking several ribs and is very difficult to arrange on a person who is fighting back. Really, it's best to break their neck and have done with it.

When she killed the Dzur known as Lamar, she snapped his neck, but he was too surprised to be fighting back; that or he was unwilling to fight against one female Jhereg, one who was smaller than him and carried no weapon.

It was nothing personal. He was a good man all told, even if he had made two attempts on Dzur Mountain (he had never made it above the cloudline; Sethra, in either a merciful or cruel mood depending on your perspective, had arranged via an enchantment for anyone who entered the Overcast that week to be turned around and emerge below it without getting near any of the doors). It was simply that he had been asked to guard several artifacts that a friend of Kiera's stood in urgent need of, and all her skill as a thief had found no way to retrive them while he was still living. So she took the straightforward route, and walked up to him when he wan't expecting it.

 

3.

It was good that most of Sethra's defenses relied upon Elder Sorcery, or else the Interrregnum would have left her helpless. As it was it was simply an inconvenience. However, the resulting mess meant that it was a long time before she got around to replacing those defenses that had relied upon simple sorcery. Indeed, before she did, three people had made their way to the mountain with revenge on their minds.

Two were Dragons; one was a Jhereg. She turned the Dragons back easily enough, once she noticed them; the Jhereg, a sorceress, she invited in for tea. Perhaps she felt that she should explain to someone what had happened, and it was just as well that it be someone who could be relied upon to keep their silence. They were friends after that, in a sense.

Kiera was very sorry to have to take a contract on the woman, but sometimes that was just the way things were.

 

2.

The Emperor Thyaliss II was very much a Vallista. At first, this seemed like a good thing. He institued order, restored roads throughout the Empire, and began an ambitous project of restoring the universites and contrsucting new ones in every major city that was lacking. Sethra Lavode was pleased to support his ambitions.

Seven hundred and five years later, he canceled the Lavodes' budget to pay for the achitectural studies of the proposed Northport University. Sethra walked out of the court. It got attention. Thyaliss's other policies began to be questioned. Sethra, meanwhile, battened the hatches for a long spell of solitude and Dzur-baiting.

Two years after that, Thyaliss was killed by a Jhereg assassin. He was walking down the Coridoor of the Seven Urns at the time, with the Captain of the Guard. As soon as the Captain heard an unusual noise she reached for her sword, but the sword was no longer there. Without it there was little chance agaisnt a skilled opponent moving swiftly.

A few minutes later, in a courtyard a quarter-mile away, Kiera chucked the captain's sword into an ornamental pond and watched it sink beneath the weeds. Sometimes the Cycle just needed a little push.

 

1.

Kiera was the name she gave to the guards at the perimeter of the Jhereg camp. It was easier than the truth. It was a subtle announcement, and besides, she had come in disguise. Dolivar knew what it meant, but he did not speak of it. He greeted her as a stranger and they talked of things other than what they truly wished to say.

After that she came alone, on no one's behalf, but still she gave her name as Kiera and still he pretended that Kiera had never been anyone else.

The last time they met he sent her back with a message. "This is riduclous," she said. "Why do you want to see him? You have your place in the Empire now. He has his spies. What else is there to talk about?"

Dolivar just smiled. "He's still my brother, whatever he thinks." She could have refused, and maybe things would have turned out differently. But she did not, and for years she held herself responsible.

 

\--


End file.
